"Publish And Be Damned" (Of Sensational Defamation)

Dishing the dirt does not always pay. Those who do not know History are doomed to repeat it.

"Publish and be damned," is believed to have been the first Duke of Wellington's response to literary blackmail. He was offered the opportunity to pay heftily to have a chapter about his extra-marital sexual exploits omitted from a tell-all series.

Brian Cathcart tells the scurrilous tale.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-when-wellington-said-publish-and-be-damned-the-field-marshal-and-the-scarlet-woman-1430412.html

Modern day legal bloggers, Patrick Considine,  Peter Bartlett, and Dean Levitan writing for Minter Ellison reflect on the current state of sensational defamation and suggest four lessons for publishers (media companies), following a major lawsuit which resulted in the largest defamation payout to a single person in Australian history.

See here:
https://www.minterellison.com/articles/four-lessons-for-media-companies-after-major-defamation-payout

So much for blackmail, and scurrilous scandal that may or may not be approximately accurate, at least as regards His Grace. It boggles the mind why writers of fiction would both "date" their work and expose themselves to the risk of a lawsuit by mentioning a living person, even a celebrity (known to have fewer rights in America) in an unflattering context.

Ron Charles, writing for The Washington Post reports on one such instance in particular, and several recent instances in general.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/alan-dershowitz-claims-the-good-wife-defamed-him-the-implications-for-fiction-writers-are-very-real/2020/08/05/703e7106-d699-11ea-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html

Ron's article is a jolly good read, with a nod and a wink to the Odyssey and to Shakespeare's Historical Plays, and also to Walt Disney's famous water fowl, an actor or two, and current and former politicians.

Talking of Hollywood, legal blogger Toni Oncidi for Proskauer Rose LLP notes that publishing Hollywood actors' full birth dates is perfectly acceptable.
https://calemploymentlawupdate.proskauer.com/2020/07/dark-day-for-hollywood-law-prohibiting-online-publication-of-actors-ages-is-struck-down/#page=1

In these days of rampant identity theft, it seems wrong to this writer that birthdays can be exploited against the wishes of the celebrity... but no doubt it's good for LifeLock. For those not being exploited and exposed by IMBD and its like, many of those "person-locator sites" are required by law to remove information upon request, but they don't make it easy to find out how.

Try reading all the way through Terms Of Use or Terms Of Service, or Contact Us, or Privacy Policy, and legitimately scurrilous sites will have an explanation of users' opt out rights.

Be watchful, also, about the information you provide for "two factor id" on sites such as Twitter.

According to legal blogger Jenny L. Colgate, writing for Rothwell Figg's Privacy Zone blog, Twitter has been exploiting that supposedly super private data and sharing it with advertisers.
https://www.theprivacylaw.com/2020/08/time-to-double-check-your-corporate-practices-twitters-use-of-personal-information-gathered-for-security-e-g-two-factor-id-fo

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

PS. Apologies for the late "Publish". Thunderstorms, power cuts, loss of internet is the reason.

All About Face...And Image

This last week, the theme has been legal reversals (about face), about amusing, face-changing apps that come embedded with hidden dangers, a new trick by Facebook to "protect" users from inappropriate (age-inappropriate) paid advertising, and rampant, willful exploitation of artists' creative works.

Blogging for law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC, beauty and dispute resolution expert Jordyn Eisenpress discusses the new policy from Facebook-owned Instagram that new users must reveal their birthdays. Apparently, they will scrape linked Facebook accounts for "old" users to auto-add any birthday info that has been provided to Facebook.

Lexology link
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8007b5ef-d54f-46e7-940e-d798b01e56c6

Advertising Law link
https://advertisinglaw.fkks.com/post/102fvqb/instagram-will-ask-new-users-for-birthdays

My advice, be like the monarch of England. Have your real birthday, and a public birthday... and if a banker or stock broker or credit card customer service representative asks for your birthday, ask them to ask something else that only you would know.

Do you know where FaceApp comes from?  Can you live without it?
Allegedly, it comes from Russia. Love that!

Linn Foster Freedman, blogging for Robinson & Cole LLP warns that the FBI considers FaceApp a counterintelligence threat, and suggests that her readers improve their app hygiene. It's good advice!

https://www.dataprivacyandsecurityinsider.com/2019/12/privacy-tip-219-fbi-considers-faceapp-a-counterintelligence-threat/#page=1

For Manatt Phelps Phillips LLP, legal blogger Po Yi  asks whether Pinterest encourages, initiates and facilitates copyright infringement, and discusses why a recent copyright infringement lawsuit against Pinterest
questions the Pinterest business model.

https://www.manatt.com/Insights/Newsletters/Advertising-Law/Pinning-Copyright-Violations-on-Pinterest

In my opinion, as a Pinterest user, it would be very easy for Pinterest to add to the uploading process a pop up disclaimer where the user cannot complete the upload until they have affirmatively asserted under penalty of perjury that they own the rights to the image and are able to produce documentary proof if randomly audited by Pinterest.

Jeffrey D. Neuberger of Proskauer Rose LLP blogs about an expensive legal reversal in the case of copyright infringement by Zazzle, another company that has insufficient safeguards against immoral or ignorant users who upload other peoples copyrighted images or text for the purpose of commissioning Zazzle to create physical items displaying those images or words.

https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2019/12/10/online-willful-infringement-standard-clarified-zazzle-jury-award-reinstated/#page=1

If you use Zazzle, know your rights, responsibilities and potential liabilities... but there are probably myriad authors who would love a quote (with proper attribution) from one of their novels printed across the front of a Zazzle T-shirt. Just ask.

For those who know their limitations when it comes to a knowledge of copyright infringement and the law, this is a very good guide (if you can access Lexology.)

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/  http://www.rowenacherry.com

Authors should be particularly vigilant in compartmentalizing their vital information. Apart from the usual dangers of crooks wanting a hook for spear phishing, or to hack into some source of funds, there are crooks who even try to steal unpublished manuscripts!

Heloise Wood and Natasha Onwuemezi wrote about it recently for The Bookseller.

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/publishers-react-cyber-criminals-attempt-pilfer-manuscripts-874176

If you are an author or a reader, perhaps you have attended a convention or event at a major hotel chain. It is likely that a lot of SFWA members, or Authors Guild members, or Romance Writers of America members, or Romantic Times convention-goers, or have been to a Marriott or Starwood Hotel or convention center in the last five years.

You surely will have heard of the latest data breach:
http://news.marriott.com/2018/11/marriott-announces-starwood-guest-reservation-database-security-incident/

One surprising revelation is that some unfortunate, sociable people may have had their passport numbers, drivers license numbers, birth dates, credit card numbers and more exposed.

Do you have Malwarebytes? A professional genius suggested to me that Malwarebytes is a superior product to keep Apple products safe. No one has offered this author any incentive for saying this, but it does work well, it scans often, and unlike rival products that might or might not have the word "Trust" in their name, one can have Malwarebytes on and not be automatically blocked by banks and brokerage houses.

Malwarebytes gave subscribers an early heads-up on the Starwood breach. (RWA was next quickest to alert members.)

http://click.malwarebytes.com/?qs=b8079dd9f4432aba121831613ffc097db40ce93fa4dab885884087c169afcaa4b1be94cbde983fc959cf4c993d6789e0dea279811da486ed

By email and by link, Malwarebytes offers great advice for anyone who might ever have had a Starwood hotels account. Their Data Breach Checklist is worth saving.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B2C-Data-Breach-Checklist-2018.pdf

Of course, we all know that we ought to reset passwords.... and many of us procrastinate. In fact, before blogging today, this author logged in to her SPG account and discovered that her username had already been reset to a new one. The password could then be reset, but only by someone with access to the email account on file.

Credit accounts etc should be monitored. Anyone with a DISCOVER card can receive very good, free credit monitoring and an updated FICO score every month. Fifth Third Bank offers a credit monitoring service which costs approximately $7.00 a month. That's cheaper than Lifelock, which is about $12.00 a month. Those affected by the SPG breach are being offered Webwatcher for one year. Make a note of when your anniversary date with Webwatcher will be, or you may be surprised with an automatic renewal fee.

Credit freezing is now free, so is a good option if you aren't planning to sign up for a new credit or debit card or to take out a new mortgage.

No one wants to say it, but does one really need to share one's birth date with anyone who asks, including store clerks? I don't need a $10 Vera Bradley coupon mailed to me on my birthday. Every week through the snail mail, I receive coupons from all manner of vendors for all manner of apparel and accessories.

By the way, your doctor or dentist may ask for your social security number, but you do not have to give it to them. You don't have to give them access to your smart phone number, either.  Just because they ask you to write a review of their practice does not mean you should. Do you want Google and Facebook to know approximately when you visited a gynecologist, and which office it was?

Speaking of HIPPA, the law firm of Hall Render Killian Heath and Lyman PC penned an interesting article some weeks ago about hospitals being fined for allowing a film crews to film patients without the consent of the patients who were filmed.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7cd57e75-d3ba-41c1-a949-aa003895c5d3&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2018-09-26&utm_term=

And, totally off topic, but to do with privacy, did you hear about the female student whose landlord evicted her just before her final exams because her suite mates (apparently inspired by the student's choice in political millinery) conducted a search of that student's room and private possessions in her absence and without her permission, and discovered a legally owned and safely stored gun, and complained to said landlord?  This, in a State where gun ownership is lawful, and in a rental where the lease was silent about gun ownership.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry